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Monday, August 08, 2011

MTV has a hit on its hands with their new and darker version of "Teen Wolf." But is it worth watching?

For my latest column at Patheos, I took some time to check out this new ratings winner from MTV and was surprised at what I found:

Here's a shock: MTV is actually capable of producing a television show that is not obsessed with sex, drugs, pregnant teens, and the bad behavior of twenty-somethings living in New Jersey. While recent MTV productions such as "Skins" and "The Hard Times of RJ Berger" failed to find a substantial audience even among younger viewers, their latest offering titled "Teen Wolf" is a bona fide hit and is based (primarily in name only) on the 1980s movie starring Michael J. Fox. . . . It's not hard to see why this series is playing well to younger MTV viewers. U.S. culture right now is enjoying a preoccupation with books, movies, and TV shows exploring the lives of a host of supernatural teen characters from werewolves, to vampires, to wizards with telltale scars. Even as some Christian commentators knock this brand of entertainment for immersing teens in the world of the occult, I can't help but think that the attraction is something much simpler and more innocent.